Historic and Architectural Resources of Harnett County, North Carolina, ca. 1770-1950 Mary Sherrer TRC Garrow and Associates, Inc. & Claudia R. Brown North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office December 2008 NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Historic and Architectural Resources of Harnett County, North Carolina, Section Number E Page 1 ca. 1770-1950 ________________________________________________________________________ E. STATEMENT OF HISTORIC CONTEXTS Introduction Harnett County, established in 1855 from Cumberland County, is situated in southeastern North Carolina and includes portions of the state’s Piedmont and Coastal Plain regions. Comprising 595 square miles, the county is bounded on the west by Lee and Chatham Counties, on the north by Wake County, on the east by Johnston and Sampson Counties, and on the south by Hoke, Moore, and Cumberland Counties. Harnett’s soils are rich in clay and sand, and a portion of the county is covered by the sandhills that stretch into South Carolina and have an elevation ranging from 300 to 500 feet. Early shorelines, now far inland, deposited sedimentary soils that can range from deep gray in color where fertilized, to red where iron oxide is present. These poorly drained soils traditionally have resulted in smaller farms than those found in the state’s far eastern counties. The area’s pine forests have produced valuable timber and naval stores, while its waterways have provided transportation and hydroelectric power. The county’s major river is the Cape Fear, which runs southeasterly from the North Carolina Piedmont to the Atlantic Ocean, dividing the county’s eastern and western sections.1 Early County Development, 1730s to 1840s European Settlement Both Iroquoian and Siouan-speaking peoples occupied present-day Harnett County during the period of contact with Europeans. Siouan-speakers included the Occaneechi and Sissipahaw, while the most dominant group of Iroquois were the Tuscarora. The Tuscarora’s territory included most of the North Carolina Coastal Plain, stretching from the Neuse River to the Pamlico River, and from the Cape Fear River to the present-day Virginia border. Unfair trading practices and European settlement on the Tuscaroras’ lands led to a series of armed conflicts from 1711 to 1715. Although the Tuscaroras almost succeeded in destroying settlements in the western Coastal Plain, they suffered terrible losses with an estimated 1,000 killed and 1,000 sold into slavery. By 1754, only 301 Tuscarora were still living in North Carolina, and by 1766, a majority had moved north to join the New York and Pennsylvania Iroquois. In 1801, the group in New York sold their remaining lands in North Carolina.2 The Tuscaroras’ defeat, along with other factors, encouraged European settlement in the upper Cape Fear River valley. Local authorities worked to clarify land policies, ensuring settlers clear title. In 1729, seven of the eight Lords Proprietors sold their interests to the British Crown, making North Carolina a royal colony. The 1 William S. Powell, North Carolina through Four Centuries (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), pp. 4 and 9-10; David Leroy Corbitt, The Formation of the North Carolina Counties 1663-1943 (Raleigh: State Department of Archives and History, 1950), p. 115; United States Department of Commerce, “US Census Bureau,” http://www.census.gov, accessed 14 August 2002. 2 Powell, North Carolina through Four Centuries, pp. 22-24; H. Trawick Ward and R. P. Stephen Davis Jr., Time Before History: The Archaeology of North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), pp. 22-25 and 274. NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Historic and Architectural Resources of Harnett County, North Carolina, Section Number E Page 2 ca. 1770-1950 ________________________________________________________________________ subsequent royal governors encouraged settlement by improving roads, bridges, and channel markers, increasing the likelihood that farmers would be able to transport goods to a market. These improvements also prompted the establishment of grist and sawmills and the beginning of naval stores production.3 European settlement began in the present-day Harnett County area between the 1730s and 1740s. Three major groups moved to the area on the northern stretches of the Cape Fear River, joining the English settlers who came from Virginia and South Carolina. Highland Scots settled in the greatest numbers, emigrating directly from Scotland. By 1754, the area had become so densely populated by these groups that the colony created Cumberland County from northern Bladen County, which had been created only twenty years previously in response to increasing settlement. The second group, comprising second and third-generation Scots-Irish Americans, immigrated to the Cumberland area from Pennsylvania via Virginia on the Great Wagon Road. Finally, groups of German immigrants came from Pennsylvania via the Great Wagon Road and from New Bern, North Carolina. Some, like the Highland Scots, were first generation immigrants who retained their language and social structure decades after their move to North Carolina.4 Religion The settlers established several religious congregations in the Harnett County area, including Barbecue Presbyterian Church, Neill’s Creek Baptist Church, and Cokesbury United Methodist Church. Often the churches served as the social as well as religious focus of rural communities that had no commercial center. The Reverend James Campbell organized Barbecue Presbyterian Church in 1757 and, later, Bluff and Longstreet Presbyterian churches. Barbecue is the only one of the three still active in its original location. Campbell’s ability to organize additional congregations and the architecture of Barbecue reveal an expanding and rapidly developing settlement. According to the church’s history, the congregation built their first house of worship, a 27-foot long log building, in 1765. Only ten years later, the congregation replaced the log church with a 45-foot by 30-foot frame church, a reflection of both the growing congregation and its sense of permanence.5 Barbecue members also organized Summerville Presbyterian, or Tirzah, as it was originally known, in 1811.6 3 Powell, North Carolina through Four Centuries, pp. 80-81, 84 and 86. 4 Powell, North Carolina through Four Centuries, pp. 106-110; Federal Writers' Project of the Federal Works Agency, Works Projects Administration, North Carolina: WPA Guide to the Old North State, 2nd ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1988), p. 36; Hugh Talmage Lefler and Albert Ray Newsome, North Carolina: The History of a Southern State, 3rd ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973), p. 79; Corbitt, Formation of North Carolina Counties, p. 79. 5 HT 149, Harnett County Survey Files, North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office, Raleigh. 6 Leon McDonald, “Historical Sketch of Western Harnett County,” in Harnett County Centennial Celebration Program, 1955; United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, "Summerville Presbyterian Church," National Register of Historic Places nomination form, 25 April 1985, p. 8:1 NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Historic and Architectural Resources of Harnett County, North Carolina, Section Number E Page 3 ca. 1770-1950 ________________________________________________________________________ There were several early Baptist congregations in Harnett County. Neill’s Creek Baptist Church, organized in 1790, is the oldest Baptist church in Harnett and Cumberland Counties. The church was named after Neal MacNeill, and although earlier buildings were destroyed by fire, replacement structures consistently were rebuilt on the original site of the first church. Isaac Johnson, a former slave who worshipped at Neill’s Creek, remembered baptisms being held in Reuben Matthews’ nearby millpond.7 Cumberland Baptist, near Cokesbury, may be the county’s second oldest Baptist congregation, organized in the 1820s.8 By the 1840s, Primitive Baptist, Free Will Baptist, and Quaker congregations were meeting in a log building on the site of Bethsaida Primitive Baptist Church.9 Cokesbury United Methodist Church, named for circuit riders Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury, is the oldest Methodist church in Harnett County. Joel Prince gave ten acres of land to the trustees of the church in 1838 for its construction. The original tract of land later included a Masonic lodge built in 1866 and a school building constructed in 1887.10 Over the years, these congregations replaced their earliest houses of worship as their memberships and needs expanded. While some frame structures such as Bethsaida Primitive Baptist and Cumberland Baptist churches date from the mid to late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, many have been rebuilt in the late twentieth century as large brick churches, often with an educational or recreational facility as an addition. Nevertheless, the congregations remain significant as evidence of some of the county’s earliest settlements, and frequently newer structures are built on or near the original church site, sometimes